Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a major Russian newspaper, put Wajda’s name alongside some of the greatest directors of all time: Federico Fellini, Andriej Tarkowski, Akira Kurosawa, Luis Bunuel and Ingmar Bergman. Moreover, they wrote:
[…] the 20th century was the great century of cinema. We will miss it one day (…) as in present day cinematography, there’s no place for artists of that calibre.
Wajda’s death didn’t pass unnoticed in France either. Le Monde wrote on its front page:
Throughout his life he was an artist sensitive to socio-political issues, a eulogist of Poland’s difficult history, which he always strived to put in a universal dimension.
The German newspaper Die Welt published an obituary saying that:
He was Polish cinema and Polish history, the most important Polish director after World War II, a true chronicler of his country, a moral institution, a social critic with a movie camera.
Swedish reporter Hynek Palls of Dagens Nyhter wrote:
Wajda excelled at picturing the struggles of a man living in a totalitarian regime.
Finally, the Italian paper La Repubblica ended its article on his life and works with a simple epitaph:
We lost a great European.
